4.Â The Current State of FreeBSD and BSD Licenses

The so-called new BSD
license applied to FreeBSD within the last few years is
effectively a statement that you can do anything with the program
or its source, but you do not have any warranty and none of the
authors has any liability (basically, you cannot sue anybody). This
new BSD license is intended to encourage product
commercialization. Any BSD code can be sold or included in
proprietary products without any restrictions on the availability
of your code or your future behavior.

Do not confuse the new BSD license with “public
domain”. While an item in the public domain is also free
for all to use, it has no owner.